Theater, Between Technology and Visual Arts

Abstract

Abstract Since Antiquity, there have been biunivocal links between theater, technology and visual arts, each of these branches being, if not decisively influenced by the others, at least stimulated. Technology was put at the service of theater either as a logistical part or in “main” roles, sometimes in competition with the actor, in other words with the man. In the first case we are dealing with elevators, cranes, light or sound devices and so on. In the second, with automatic machines, largely autonomous. Applied arts, costumes, scenery, stage props and everything related to scenography are largely synonymous with the performing arts. On the other hand, the technicalartistic commands and requirements coming from the theater have always been a step forward for those directions. Technology and art have also influenced each other, if we take into account, for example, Leonardo da Vinci’s utopian sketches, endowed rather with artistic qualities, but at the same time often functional as stage props. This article points out the idea written above through several representative case studies for the subject approached in a historically evolutionary perspective, relating them to the philosophical concepts or social phenomena behind them.